Dawn Patrol

For some reason I woke up last night in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. I was wondering around my flat at about 3 o’clock, making cups of tea, trying to find a book which would send me to sleep and muttering about the busy day I had ahead.

Eventually I wrapped a soft shawl round myself and curled up on the sitting room sofa and watched the grey light stealing into the room. There were long shadows on the grass and apart from the odd ambulance siren, it was silent. Gradually the magic of this secret time of the morning stole over me.

It seemed that everything was gently gathering itself for the new day. I felt I had a world of choice and possibility before me and strangely that it lay in my hands whether I had a great day full of joy or a moody day filled with struggle. It felt like I was poised on a knife edge.

Then soaring out of the night came the first notes of the Dawn Chorus. A blackbird high on a branch had no such dilemmas. He knew exactly what his purpose was and he was unashamedly letting the world know. The beauty of the sound fully decided me and I went back to bed with a smile and the conviction that I was going to have a joyful day.

(I have recorded a guided meditation which has been inspired by my dawn vigil, as a podcast. Hope you enjoy it)

Smile

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;

what is essential is invisible to the eye

Flower Essences

I am a great fan of using the subtle energies of flower essences. I have always found them to be powerful but gentle and very supportive and transformational. I particularly like using some of the wonderful space sprays which have been developed. Today I got another bottle of White Beauty Aura Spray. It is made from the vibrations of a gorgeous orchid with the essential oil of rose otto.

Here is the accompanying information about it: “Nurturing and de-stressing. Envelops one with unconditional love akin to that of a mother for a newborn child. Refreshing and mildly relaxing, can be used as a post-trauma spray for both people and animals.”

Emma has used it with both Poppy and Alora when they were babies and now I use it in Healing the Family workshops to support some of the emotional releases which are part of that journey.

It has a wonderful scent and it really does feel as if you are being given a healing hug.

(Living Tree Orchid Essences - White Beauty Aura Spray. I buy mine from the International Flower Essence Repertoire - www.healingorchids.com )

Tranquility

Years ago my Dad made me a wooden Solitaire board and at last yesterday I was given a bag of marbles to pop into the holes. (It’s nearly impossible to find old fashioned marbles!) So last night I played several games, trying to remember all the tactics I had used to get the game out. Before I knew it two hours had passed and I was amazingly chilled out. The concentration, the soft click of the glass marbles against the wood and the elation when I won, were letting any stress and strains melt away. Only thing of course, is that it can be addictive!

Beliefs, Programs & Downloads

Beliefs

We have beliefs on just about every situation, event and purpose in our lives. Our beliefs are what we think make us who we are. Some of these beliefs we have formulated ourselves, some have been handed down to us from our parents and through the ancestral lines, some beliefs are historical - both our own past experience and also the beliefs of mankind and society.

Pretty powerful stuff and usually these beliefs are held at unconscious levels so that it can be hard for us to identify them and change the ones which aren’t serving us. Sometimes we resist letting go of these beliefs because we believe they are ‘reality’. Sometimes we hold on to them because we don’t know how to live without them.

The processes of Theta Healing allow these beliefs to be rapidly identified and then to be changed on all levels so we are then able to move forward in our lives. It is a very liberating experience - it feels as if a weight has been lifted and we are one step closer to being who we truly desire to be.

Programs

Programs are a cluster of beliefs. For example a core belief may be - ‘I don’t deserve to be rich.’ This belief may be part of a program of - ‘I am not worthy.’ The program is all the beliefs connected with worthiness.

Just as with beliefs, these programs can be examined and then lifted with ease and grace with Theta and again, the feeling of being set free is wonderful.

Downloads

Downloads are one of the most powerful aspects of Theta Healing. Downloads are energy frequencies and by using these we can be taught what it feels like to be loved, cherished, respected. Downloads can teach us how to live without negative feelings which we have created through beliefs, programs and patterns of behaviour. For example we can learn - ‘I know how to live without pain.’

Some of us have forgotten how to experience these feelings, sometimes we have never experienced them. To be taught through the Creative Force what it feels like to feel rich or to be loved or to live our lives in joy is the reason we can then manifest what we truly want in our lives. By experiencing and radiating these feelings, we attract all the wealth, health and happiness we want.

Comfort

It was my Mum’s birthday a few days ago. She has been dead for many years now but her birthday still has a resonance. I usually raise a glass and a thank you for all she taught me and all she was. Sometimes when I am in a healing session I feel her and once or twice I’ve even felt her hand on my shoulder when I’ve been in a dark place.

I guess there is always comfort when we become aware of the continuing presence of someone we love and miss and of course there is always the way my granddaughter turns her head sometimes or puts her hands on her hips which remind me so much of Mum and which brings her in close to me.

Rainbows

Rainbow overhead
Colours are magnificent
We too gleam with light

Allowing Abundance

For the past few days I’ve been writing the teaching notes for the full day Abundance and Manifesting Workshop and it naturally has got me thinking about abundance and manifesting. I’ve noticed how often we block the flow of abundance, usually just by saying no or thinking up reasons why something isn’t convenient at this moment or in hundreds of other ways of justifying fear.

What I haven’t fully worked out yet is why we have such fear at the thought that everything and anything can be ours. As Marianne Williamson says, ‘...playing small doesn’t serve the world.’ And yet most of us seem intent on doing just that. Few of us take a deep enough breath to allow ourselves to expand to all that we can be.

What I do know is that when we relax even a little bit, abundance can create miracles. We don’t have to force it, we certainly don’t have to fight the Universe for it. If we just allow it, abundance flows into our lives with grace and magnificent gifts.

Positive Self- Image

I have been so busy lately setting up 7th Space and working with clients that I haven’t been paying attention to my diet. Lots of snatched meals and keeping my energy up with chocolate bars. I’ve also been ‘rewarding’ myself with high carbohydrate food after a long day. So of course the pounds have piled on.

Emma and I do healing and belief work on ourselves all the time but somehow I wasn’t recognising that I wasn’t in a good place with my diet. Once I did and took a long look in the mirror, I’m afraid I descended into a spiral of feeling bad about myself, hating the way my figure looks and feeling helpless to do anything about it. Sometimes a healer needs healing!

As usual Creator had a plan. Over the past week, I’ve been helping Emma fine-tune her Positive Self-Image Workshop and I took the opportunity to explore with her help the beliefs and issues I have about my weight and diet.

Because of that, I’ve noticed a significant improvement with my diet. Suddenly I’m craving colourful salads, I find my beliefs about using food as comfort have changed and best yet, my waist is half an inch smaller. I’m not ready for the bikini yet but from past experience, I know that lifting beliefs and feelings with Theta creates long lasting change.

Healing Vibrations

I’ve been visiting friends in Fife again and it’s been a glorious day. I’ve soaked up the beauty of the lilac trees, the clematis and the geraniums in the garden. I’ve sat on a rock on the beach and feasted my eyes on the sparkles on the Firth of Forth and now I’m typing this in bed and watching great black clouds sweep across the sea and sky.

And through most of the day, my healing guides have been showing me that the salt laden air, the birdsong and the perfume from the flowers are energy frequencies which as we experience them are being downloaded into us. They tell me that feeling renewed and refreshed after a day in nature is not just a transitory effect or even our imagination, but that true healing vibrations have been integrated in our cells.

Certainly beats potions and pills!

Overtone Chanting

I have just had the pleasure of meeting the lovely Peter Govan (http://www.petergovan.com/)

'He has delighted audiences with his Overtone singing concerts, playing Indian Harmonium and his original compositions, blending Mongolian throat singing, Indian Kirtans, traditional Scottish music, Songs of the selki seal people and eastern harmonies to produce soulful ambient music and CD’s with soaring vocal harmonies for many years.'

Listening now to his Devotion CD I really recommend you get along to see him perform.

Overtone Singing Concert with Peter Govan and Robert Hilary
Salisbury Centre,
2 Salibury Road. Edinburgh

Fri 5th June. 7.30pm - 9pm.

The Cow

The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk.

~ Ogden Nash

Serenity

There were some workmen outside my flat this morning, drilling holes in the masonry. That’s the drill which sounds like the worst kind of dentist’s drill. My jaw started to ache just hearing it.

I was in the middle of recording a guided meditation when it started up and I had to watch the noise spike on the sound monitor - grrrr. ‘Oi! I’m trying to be spiritual here,’ I wanted to yell. I stamped around a while, muttering until the absurdity got to me.

It’s so much easier to feel loving and light-filled when you are surrounded by peace and birds singing, but the point is to still feel that when all you want to do is choke some innocent guys just doing their jobs. That’s the moment you realise...it isn’t actually about you at all, the Universe isn’t conspiring against you to ruin your day. The true impact is actually how you respond and how well you keep your centre.

By way of penance, I made them both a mug of tea.

Lovely Reiki..

The Edinburgh Reiki Group is a not-for-profit collection of amateur and professional Reiki practitioners who meet on a Wednesday night at Cafe Solas. They offer short 30 minute Reiki Healings, for which they ask a donation of £7 towards the cost of the room hire.

Wednesdays 7pm - 9pm (last treatment 8.20pm)

Cafe Solas, 2-4 Abbeymount, Edinburgh EH8

Everyone is welcome!

For more info check out: www.reiki-group.co.uk

Goldfish

It’s no use mouthing

O after O at me –
I don’t speak goldfish!

~David Cobb

Yum!

I seem to be obsessed with food this week! Here is a quote from Gerald Durrel's My Family and Other Animals which first made me aware of the sheer sensuousness of food.

"Tottering mounds of hot scones; crisp, paper-thin biscuits; cakes like snowdrifts, oozing jam; cakes, dark, rich and moist, crammed with fruit; brandy snaps brittle as coral and overflowing with honey..."

Grand Opening of 7th Space

Tonight is our Grand Opening for 7th Space.

Around 7.00 p.m. we will raise a glass of champagne to all of you who can’t make it to the Space in person, but whose best wishes and wonderful energy have kept us buoyant over the last couple of weeks!

And we’ll send out hopes and wishes that you’ll drop in by soon to see us!

Saffron

What is purple in the earth, red in the market and yellow on the table? (Iranian riddle)

I love cooking - all the women and most of the men in our family are good cooks. We use any excuse to get together and eat. I love experimenting with world cuisines and one of my passions is middle-eastern food.

Saffron is an amazing ingredient, famous in Paella. It gives a wonderful colour and the taste...
It is the world's most expensive spice and even if you don't use it in cooking, it is lovely just to have some in a jar - the scent is a magical mixture of honey and earth and the exotic East!

Beachcombing

I used to own a cottage in Fife in the sea-side village of Lower Largo and today I was back there visiting friends.

Fortunately my friends are great beachcombers because all I wanted to do was chill out by strolling along the shore, collecting shells and enjoying the call of the sea birds.

The wind was fresh along the Firth and it blew all the cobwebs away. I came home with a stash of shells to put on my mantle piece.

There's the slight smell of salt air coming from them and I feel refreshed just looking at them.

"The Psychic"

She knows the future like the palm in your hand
She knows your past like the lay of the land
The first time she met me she saw right through me
Some cards and a cane in her hand - and she said:

All the years that have come to pass
And all the years that shall be
I see here right before me

She said her visions were a bane in her life
She could not control them, they kept her up nights
I know what you're thinking, I haven't been drinking
She knew things that cut like a knife - and she said:

All the years that have come to pass
And all the years that shall be
I see here right before me

Will there be earthquakes and great tidal waves?
Can she see back to the dinosaur days?
How can she foresee just by squinting at me and
Can she see me naked in her mind's eye?
What does she think when she foretells a disease?
Would she keep it a secret if death stood before me?
What could some cards hold, where is her foothold
Can I escape what she sees? And she said:

All the years that have come to pass
And all the years that shall be
I see here right before me
I see here before me

Crash Test Dummies

Chalice Well Garden

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Chalice Well Garden in Glastonbury. It is the most wonderful place as many of you will know.

Chalice Well is Peace
Across the land hope rays out
One heart is touched deep

Australia

I’ve just been watching the Baz Leherman film ‘Australia’. I’ve wanted to go to Australia since I was a little girl and finally last year I did.

When you are back-packing there isn’t a lot of time to take notes but here is one entry from my journal:

‘This whole trip seems to have been defined by starlit skies.

In Darwin the night sky was cyclone bound with fast wind-scudded clouds. Humid and noise-filled with the wild-west antics of the Friday night crowds.

In Alice Springs - hot resin sweet gumtree perfumes, hot winds like opening an oven door. A sky so dark it was limitless purple, Venus bright enough to read by and the quick dawn lift of a hot-air balloon.

On the Bellarine Peninsula out of Melbourne it was salt-laden, utterly silent, horizon to horizon and total freedom. Walking across a camp field not sure if I was some kind of Australian spirit - the sense of belonging so strong.

Here in Sydney it’s wet and scented with Murraya blossoms - a highway for giant fruit bats.’

The film brought it all back!

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful. ~ Abram L. Urban

Abundance

Neither Emma or I subscribe to the 'spirituality means a life of abstinence' view.

We think life is for living and enjoying all the many scents, tastes, textures which enrich us day to day.

So bring on the fresh brewed coffee and the red wine. Bring on buying some flowers (even when your budget says buy food!). Bring on cocktails and jazz from the 20s and a roomful of candles.

Spiritual Certainty

The Bells of Hell

The bells of Hell go ting-a-ling for you and not for me
For me the Angels sing-a-ling they've got the goods for me.
O death where is thy sting-a-ling? O grave thy victory?
The bells of Hell go ting-a-ling for you and not for me.

(American Salvationist Hymn)

Beware spiritual superiority!

Up, Up and Away

Milky Way

I’ve always loved reading myths and legends and especially the stories people have told about the night sky. The stars and galaxies seem to have such a hold on our human psyche and perhaps in recognition that we are part of the Universe, many of the tales involve people being transformed into the constellations.

Here is an Australian Aboriginal tale of The Men of the Milky Way.



In the long distant past, the men of the Maludaianini people were always sneaking into the jungle with the women of other men, even though they had wives of their own. This behaviour caused a great deal of jealousy and bickering which finally developed into a fight in which some of the men were killed.

After this the Maludaianini people went into the sky, the men becoming the Milky Way; the women some of the near-by stars.

When the Sun-woman, Wuriupranala, disappears behind the western horizon, and the light of her torch has faded, the men of the Milky Way travel in a wide band across the sky, visiting their wives as they go.

The Eddies of Life

“I scanned ahead for a break in the waves, any piece of quieter water that might present a chance of turning more safely. Two or three little pockets materialised briefly but before I could use them they seemed to morph into something ugly and unreadable and I kept saying ‘ Shoot, missed that one … Oops! Too late, sorry!’”

Michael Faulkner in ‘The Blue Cabin’ is talking about living by the tides on an island in Northern Ireland.

Reading this paragraph made me think of how life often seems. Looking for calm waters we hit unexpected turbulence. Troubles seem to pile one on top of the other and it’s hard to see beyond the mountainous seas.

But just as a sailor is dependent on the wind, learning to feel its every movement and trust that it will steer him out of choppy water, we need to trust in ourselves and the flow of life. Struggling desperately to stay in control, we often sink beneath the water. Whereas when we loosen up a bit and look around for possibilities and choices, we find ourselves breasting the waves and floating to a safe harbour.

Abraham-Hicks

Surprises

I had a lovely surprise today when I came home. Two Welsh poppies are blooming under my bedroom window. They look so fragile but also so full of life.

Lotus

moonlit lotus glistens

as croaking frogs chant

moist darkness
~~~~~~~~~~~

Soar!

There were half a dozen kites high in the sky below Arthur’s Seat when I passed earlier.

I remember the very first time I flew a kite. It was almost too windy and at times the kite couldn’t get enough lift. But when it did...it was the most fabulous feeling - the wind tugging on the string, the swerve and swoop of the kite. It was really possible to feel I was flying myself!

As adults we forget to do these wonderful things. We forget to spread our arms wide and spin round and round until we collapse breathless on the grass. We forget to find a swing hanging under a green tree and push ourselves higher and higher, leaning back and feeling dizzy as the leaves rush past us. We forget to speed downhill on a bicycle, hair streaming out behind us and screeching for joy.

We need to throw caution (and health and safety petty rules) to the wind and remember the freedom we had as children feeling alive in every cell in our bodies!

Manifesting

The Prayer of Mauchan

I wish, O Son of the Living God, O ancient, eternal king,
For a little hidden hut in the wilderness that it may be my dwelling.

An all-grey little lake to be by its side
A clear pool to wash away sins through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Quite near, a beautiful wood around it on every side
To nurse many-voiced birds, hiding in its shelter.

A southern aspect for warmth, a little brook across its floor
A choice land with many gracious gifts such as to be good for every plant.

This is the husbandry I would take, I would choose and will not hide it
Fragrant leeks, 8 hens, speckled salmon, trout, bees

Raiment and food enough for me from the King of Fair Fame
And I to be sitting for a while, praising God in every place.


from the Gaelic - early monastic circa 7th century

Is it Spring Yet?

Has Spring arrived yet?

Yes according to my granddaughters - Poppy (in the bunny ears) and Alora.

This photo of Emma and Caroline with the girls is deceptively serene - 2 seconds earlier the girls were dancing round the room like dervishes - the embodiment of the exuberance of Spring.

Look Up

I'm already in a spring mood with all the glorious blossom and fresh greenery around. Today the blossom has been snowing down on the streets in little flurries as if the trees are in a particular hurry to usher in the Summer this year!

What I enjoy most about spring in Edinburgh is the sky. The light here in the east of Scotland has a clear and intense quality (in contrast to the wonderful soft light you find in the west of the country) and the combination of the intense blue sky against the mellow local stone and the spring greenery is particularly wonderful.

Living in the city, with buildings all around you, it is sometimes easy to forget that the sky is there. We're lucky in Edinburgh. The ups and downs of the volcanic landscape and the gentle slope down to the Firth of Forth mean that, wherever you are in the city, you always get a glimpse of the sky.

For everyone living amongst buildings: take a moment now and again to look up!

May Day

Happy May Day